(From company literature) Lowepro CompuRover AW. Versatility and then some! This three compartment backpack carries a digital pro SLR with lens attached, 2-4 additional lenses (up to 80-200 mm), a 17” notebook computer, digital accessories and personal gear. But capacity alone is not what makes the CompuRover AW so amazing. It’s packed with features that every digital Adventure photographer will appreciate: a drop-down tripod holder, cable management bag, removable waist belt, built-in memory card pouch and the patented All Weather Cover™. It’s more than enough to impress any photographer.

Annoying closing lover compartment , lack of small pockets in top compartment, too small bottle-holder.

I recommend that you peek at the images on Lowepros website while reading this review.

This bag is big, so try it before you buy.
The top compartment i pretty big, yet the lover compartment (the camera compartment) can contain approx. One body and five lenses (if you put a 50 mm lens beside your f/2.8 zoom, it works out, otherwise you might encounter problems with lenses clutched so tight, that it will be a pain getting them out of the bag quickly).
It would be nice though if the were better options for organizing your stuff in the upper compartment of the bag - there is plenty of room for memory cards (personally I use SD-cards, and I estimate that there is space for 10 of these in the fairly easy accessible (yet all right protected) memory-card pocket.

The camera compartment is fairly easy to open, but closing is annoying (especially when a tripod is mounted) because of the two padded flaps (one in each side) that has to "slide" in ´to the upper half of the bag. These flaps protects the camera gear from the sides, but they could have been designed less annoying anyways.
There is good opportunity for organizing your stuff in the camera compartment; this is done the standard way by reorganizing the velcro-attached padded flaps that create small compartments for your lenses and bodies.
A nice detail when you open the lover compartment, is that it's the top compartment tip backwards (assuming the you are facing the front of the bag) rather than the lover compartment tips and drops your gear to the ground.

The bag has a tripod carrying system, which is placed in center of the front of the bag - the fact that it is centered gives good opportunities for aligning the weight evenly to both sides of the bag. However the centered position gives up some of the "quick-accesiblenes" of the camera compartment when a tripod is mounted, because the tripod is in the way for the zippers (and in the way when you are pulling the gear out). When not in use the system is very discrete and wont hamper the basic operations of the bag, as it does when in use.

The bag has a third, rear compartment for a laptop. I haven't tried it with a laptop, but it works well with files, folders book and the like; the padding to the back of the bag is very good indeed, and I have no doubts that a laptop will be very well off in a bag like this one.

The hip-belt i removable - yet it stays in place when attached.The Hip belt i however placed a bit high, and the is no options for adjusting the position of it. You can of course adjust the length of the hip-belt, and there is no problems with the the hip-belt slowly sliding longer.
In addition to the hip-belt, there is a little strap to keep the carrying-straps together at the shoulders.
The Hip-belt and the carrying-straps i very well-padded.

In each side there is a "bottle-holder", however it's for very small bottles only - a normal 0,5 L bottle can be mounted on the head though, and then be strapped to the bag by the strap just a little above the mesh-net that's supposed to hold the bottle. It works if your bottle is thinner at the top (like a rocket), but it's pretty awkward, and you don't just get your bottle and take a sip. You can however get a Sliplock accessory to keep a Nalgene bottle in, but I dislike having such a big item hanging from either the hip-belt nor the carrying-straps.

There is six straps for Sliplock-attatchments, however four of them is on the removable hip-belt, making it two if you come dislike the hip-belt (my bag often gets pretty heavy, so I use the hip-belt all the time - the support i gives is great).
But as I previously stated I dislike having big items hanging from either the hip, nor the shoulder (the arm can't swing properly when hiking).

Hope you can use my review, and hope you understand it with all the gramatic errors it properly contains - wrote this at work, and I didn't have access to a dictionary or Microsoft Word or something like that, and since English isn't my native language...

sport

Registered: October 2006Posts: 1

Lowepro CompuRover AW review by sport

Review Date: 10/18/2006

Would you recommend the product? Yes |
Total Spent: $169.00| Rating: 9

I bought this pack for a trip to Maui so that I could carry my laptop and camera. Overall, I am very pleased with it.

Pros:
- Able to carry all of the camera gear that I normally take on trips and then some.
- Able to carry laptop.
- Lots of room in the top compartment
- Organizing pockets in the top pocket are perfect sizes
- Hip belt is simply perfect (very good thing when loaded)

Cons:
- This thing is huge. I had to check it on one of the small airplanes. Dimensionally, it meets most airline regs for carry-one size, but the size of the camera pocket can make it a challenge for stowing on the plane.
- Because it is huge, you can carry a lot of stuff which can make it heavy. (Try it on before walking out the door)
- The camera pocket can be a pain when trying to close. Because the pocket angles out when opened (instead of the top rotating forward), it can be challenging to zip up.

Overall, the cons are really small items when compared to how functional the backpack is. I can't say enough about how well the hip belt works. I definately recommend this pack.